Microsoft data analysis made easy
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We implemented Microsoft R along side Windows Subsystem for Linux with Airflow to do ETL data loading last year through until late this year. We had some success with both products but due to limitations to Airflow and R not being completely fully functioning versus open source R suites we have cancelled both tools not long ago. I can say during its time it was easy to set up, R was easier to use to send processing jobs through than other solutions before and after. It just did not meet our needs once we got ETL loading to a more robust point.
Pros
- Easy to set up on a windows system and integrate to network drives for data integration.
- Allows easy authenticated user access to the tool to send jobs (one less user/pw on a domain).
- Easy to integrate to other windows applications that are installed beside the software on the same system and on other windows remote systems.
- Relatively low issues in the configuration phase to enable data processing.
Cons
- It is not fully featured vs linux open source versions out there.
- It is not as easy to find (or as much) online documentation when having issues with the software.
- Use of this tool alongside WSL applications is still too early. Once WSL gets more general use then this will be a better tool.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are a MS shop specifically, or have more generic data requirement needs from Microsoft sourced data this will work well. If you have a lot of disparate data across a number of unique platforms/cloud systems/3rd party hosted data warehouses then this product will have issues or a lack of documentation on the net. Performance-wise this product is equal to other R platforms out there.
